@CONFERENCE{Kleindienst2013,title = {Von informeller Unterstützung beglückt? Eine Schattenpreisschätzung für informell Gepflegte in Europa}, author = {Julia Kleindienst and Ulrike Schneider}, year = {2013}, address = {Wien}, language = {DE}, misc = {Geriatriekongress-Alter(n)  Chance und Herausforderung}, abstract = {Cost and Benefit of informal care in Europe
Informal care is a crucial element of our Health systems, though its provision outside the market system can make its costs and benefits difficult to measure. We use the subjective well-being valuation method to estimate both the costs and benefits of an hour of informal care, for elderly caregivers and recipients. This method for finding shadow prices has been widely used in environmental economics.
The data is from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE ). Its surveys cover representative samples of over 50-year-olds in several European countries. Our sample contains 30,000 respondents; about a third provide at least some informal care and almost half of them receive some. Controlling for respondent characteristics and environment, we estimate the impact of both income and care hours on self- assessed life satisfaction to calculate the marginal rate of substation between the two, that is, a monetary value of care.
Although there are some caveats regarding the robustness of results, our findings are interesting and, to some extent, unexpected. We find that out-of-home carers of low to moderate caring intensity may derive a substantial net benefit from their activity. This benefit is diminished and eventually reversed as more and more care-hours are provided. Health status of the caregiver also turns out to have a significant non-linear effect on their satisfaction with caring. These results are compared to those for care recipients, to form a more comprehensive picture of individual net benefits from care than has hitherto been available},}

Abstract

Cost and Benefit of informal care in Europe
Informal care is a crucial element of our Health systems, though its provision outside the market system can make its costs and benefits difficult to measure. We use the subjective well-being valuation method to estimate both the costs and benefits of an hour of informal care, for elderly caregivers and recipients. This method for finding shadow prices has been widely used in environmental economics.
The data is from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE ). Its surveys cover representative samples of over 50-year-olds in several European countries. Our sample contains 30,000 respondents; about a third provide at least some informal care and almost half of them receive some. Controlling for respondent characteristics and environment, we estimate the impact of both income and care hours on self- assessed life satisfaction to calculate the marginal rate of substation between the two, that is, a monetary value of care.
Although there are some caveats regarding the robustness of results, our findings are interesting and, to some extent, unexpected. We find that out-of-home carers of low to moderate caring intensity may derive a substantial net benefit from their activity. This benefit is diminished and eventually reversed as more and more care-hours are provided. Health status of the caregiver also turns out to have a significant non-linear effect on their satisfaction with caring. These results are compared to those for care recipients, to form a more comprehensive picture of individual net benefits from care than has hitherto been available